King of Fighters ’94 (SNK/Neo-Geo, Xbox Live) Revolutionary Concepts recently re-released this game for iPhone and iPad, and for the $1.99 asking price, it’s great. Plus, the bonus rounds – involving flying objects and a charging bull – were a lot of fun. This game doesn’t follow traditional fighting rules, but its dual joystick control set-up was innovative at the time, and two-player matches were filled with just as much strategy as a good round in a Street Fighter game. But, surprise, Data East actually led the drive way back in 1984 with Karate Champ. Many believe that the fighting genre got its start in 1989 when Capcom released the original Street Fighter into arcades. We highly recommend checking it out, even if you’re caught up in today’s more current fighters.

This one’s available on Xbox Live now, with online play. Featuring a mostly new cast (save for Geese Howard’s son Rock and a returning, older Terry Bogard), the game features fresh 2-D gameplay, topped off with a new Tactical Offense Position set-up, along with the most detailed animation we’ve seen in a Neo-Geo brawler. SNK made a mess of great fighting games in the era of the Neo-Geo console and arcade system, and among them was the ninth and final game in the Fatal Fury era, Mark of the Wolves. Garou: Mark of the Wolves (SNK/Dreamcast, Xbox Live) Fortunately, many of the aspects from this game showed up again in the Sega Saturn adventure game Guardian Heroes, with its six-player simultaneous battle arenas. Makyo Toitsusen includes a variety of great characters, fun gameplay, and, most importantly, four-player simultaneous fighting, a rarity for 16-bit beat-em-ups. Alas, an import it remains, but it’s a great one. release, it would’ve made a difference for the Yu Yu Hakusho anime line, as well as Treasure’s reputation as a quality 16-bit developer. Sigh…if Sega had considered giving this game a U.S. Yu Yu Hakusho: Makyo Toitsusen (Treasure/Mega Drive) So here we go, our ten favorites!Īnd if you disagree with our selections, hey, let us know.

As long as it stays in the second dimension, we counted it. It has to be strictly 2-D, even if there are zoom-in zoom-out effects and multi-plane jumping. Capcom 2 for its 3-D backgrounds, though it broke out heart to not include that game. While Street Fighter IV could be considered with its 2-D-style gameplay, we ruled it out because it had 3-D visuals. So we here at Gameplaybook took it upon ourselves to count down our top ten favorite 2-D fighting games of all time. Remember when fighting games weren’t consisting of polygons, or 3-D backgrounds, or, in some cases, even online play? Remember when all you needed was a good hand-drawn character, a memorable stage or a simple move set to conquer your opponent? Well, so do we.

Garou mark of the wolves wrestler